Loose Bearings

It was just switches at first. Doorways with faulty locks. Letting us through. To worlds where we didn't belong. An awkward pantomime carved in proximity. Erased by distance.

I thought I knew every number. Had memorized them all. That I had mapped every crease my world. Sunken all the buoys that would keep me from drowning. It's just space. and time. Drifting in their dense employ. Tiny mechanics in our skin. Balancing an endless array of useless machines.

I found the portals easily enough. With a little undressing. Obvious prisons. torn cuticles. On that pointing finger. Just choices. We had to make. Because we're always stranded here. In between. The weak knees of the future and the past's broken crutches. The future. It changes. Depending upon the clothes you take off. The time machine. It's powered by lovers. Their smelting flesh. Metabolizing in the fever of touch. Egregiously consenting to the world we've created ahead of us.

In hungry stutters. The record skips us ahead. To where we can look back. Survey so much nothing behind us. It's all gone. Goes away.

Plastic fingers tremble against the memory. But the button on the time machine offers no response.